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The past decade has been pretty Spezial. Adidas SPZL, the sub-brand led by Gary Aspden, Mike Chetcuti, and crew, is celebrating 10 years this week. It started as a display of Aspden’s personal stash of vintage Adidas trainers and was built into a line catering mostly to football supporters in England and throughout Europe that were hungry for a thoughtful dive into Adidas’ archive.
The line has seen the bringback of shoes from yesteryear like the Grand Slam, Boston, Atlanta, and California. It’s also had star-studded collaborations, thanks to Aspden’s connection to the world of music and sport, in part due to his years working at Adidas in entertainment marketing. Liam and Noel Gallagher, New Order, Joy Division, Union, Jurgen Klopp.
Some shoes are retros, with painstaking attention to details. Others are shoes inspired by obscure designs of yesteryear, and made new. There’re terrace shoes, leisure shoes, running shoes, and hiking shoes. The offering from SPZL is diverse, but catered to a specific audience. But you don’t have to be a football supporter who reminisces on the history of British fanatics bringing over models from mainland Europe to appreciate SPZL. Especially with an uptick in the interest in terrace shoes in the past few years, it’s awesome to see SPZL get its just due.
For those that don’t know, SPZL is a line within Adidas and Spezial is a shoe, the Handball Spezial. There have been Spezials in SPZL, but they’re not one in the same.
These are the 10 best Adidas SPZL Shoes of all time. If you get upset about this list, sorry not sorry.
Year released: 2017
The 10th spot on this list was so hard to pick. There’re so many great shoes SPZL has done over the years. Would it be the Touring? Chetcuti? Settend? Padiham? Albrecht? Glenbuck? All of those and more were considered. But I landed on the Mallison. It’s a special shoe. Named after Mark Allison, a supporter of SPZL from Scotland that was battling cancer, the shoe was a retro of the AS700. That’s a training shoe from Japan that was also sold in some European countries in the early 1980s. Allison’s date of birth is on the inside of the shoe. Allison lost his battle with pancreatic cancer before the shoe was released. There are plenty of other blockbuster collaborations in the SPZL line, but this shoe goes to show how much Aspden and crew cares about the common man. The shoe was launched in grey/blue and a second version, in brown and cream, was released in 2018. Long live Mark Allison.
Year released: 2020
Wait, you thought this was a list of trainers? What are these doing here? They’re right where they belong. The Adidas Adilette is one of the greatest pieces of footwear of all time. Looking back, I regret that we didn’t consider it for our list of best Adidas of all time. It’s certainly the best side any footwear brand has ever made. SPZL launched its version of the Adilette in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. What a great time for a slide to come out. Done up in navy and white, Aspden and crew were inspired by the color they first saw athletes wearing the Adilettes in back in the day. The slide has since been done in multiple colors and flies from the shelves when it’s released. It’s hard to improve on the original, but SPZL did a good job.
Year released: 2017
One of my favorite aspects of SPZL is that they have reintroduced the concept of Adidas’ leisures to the public. Brown leather shoes from the ‘70s that look like they were worn by geography teachers have been part of SPZL since its inception in 2014, starting with the Albrecht. The most notable out of the bunch is the Garwen. The shoe is based on Adidas Brisbane. To remake the shoe, Aspden enlisted the help of Noel Gallagher, who owned a vintage pair. The shoe was released in a brown leather, but also an all-blue edition for Noel with his face on the tongue and all. There was also a collaboration on the shoe with Union in 2018. I remember I got Trinidad James to wear the collection head to toe for an episode of Full Size Run we did at ComplexCon that year. It felt special. SPZL re-released a version of the Garwen this year for the 10th anniversary with a premium upgrade to the shoe.
Year released: 2019
A lot of the fandom for SPZL comes from a segment of collectors that go to football in Europe and are obsessed with the brand’s City Series shoes. SPZL has done shoes named after cities before. But doing a shoe named after Blackburn, Aspden’s hometown, felt special. And the Adidas Blackburn lived up to the hype. Green suede, red stripes—it’s a nice looking shoe. The shoe was inspired by the red rose of Lancashire and released in conjunction with a SPZL exhibit, Aspden’s traveling display of Adidas shoes throughout the years, in Blackburn. The Blackburn released in 2019 as a limited-but-general release. 200 pairs were done as a Nightsafe version, an organization for at-risk youth in Blackburn. SPZL would release the shoe in a reverse red as well and a version for the 10-year anniversary of SPZL.
Year released: 2016
I can’t say enough how much I love this shoe. It’s a tough task to make a white leather shoe and make it good. There are so many mediocre ones out there that have no purpose in a rotation if Stan Smiths exist. But the Lacombe is something special. The objective of the Lacombe was to create a shoe that rich people would wear on yachts in the French Riviera. Aspden was able to source a vintage pair of Adidas Newcombe and combine it with the Rod Laver Vintage. It’s a cool choice, because Aspden was involved in making Kanye West a pair of Rod Lavers in the 2000s. The Lacombe launched in 2016, but it was re-released a few seasons after and for the 10-year anniversary. I have fond memories of wearing the Lacombe. I spent a weekend in them down the Jersey Shore at Belmar and wore them to a night at D’Jais. They got torched. But man, was that a great summer. The Lacombe was also released inline and collaborated on by Hender Scheme and Donald Glover.
Year released: 2015
The inspiration behind the SPZL line was a trip Gary Aspden, Mike Chetcuti, Robert Brooks, and their crew made to Argentina after getting an email that there was a trove of vintage Adidas that had been untouched for decades. The owner of the shop was Carlos Ruiz, an elderly man who refused to liquidate his honey hole of Stripes. Aspden went down there with everyone and made the mini-doc Sole Searching in South America and used shoes they found in the store for the line. They’d go down again for part two and gift Carlos a pair of Adidas New Yorks done up in Argentina Blue with the shop owner’s face on the tongue. It’s an absolutely beautiful shoe. It was super limited, though, and is hard to come by these days. Carlos passed away last year. I spoke to Aspden about Carlos and the shoe he said, “Creating a signature shoe for him was meaningful—that kind of meaningfulness is a rare and precious thing in the modern ‘sneaker game.’”
Year released: 2022
Liam Gallagher is one of the last true rock ‘n’ roll stars on this planet. The man has an aura about him. Anything he does or wears, his fans eat it up. Oasis are back and there’s plenty of buzz around that, but there’s also been plenty of fervor over the past five years about Liam’s shoes with Adidas and SPZL. It started in 2019 with the LG SPZL, an all white version of the Adidas Padiham with Gallagher’s face on the tongue. But it really took off with the LG SPZL 2 in 2022 that was based on squash shoes for Jonah Barrington from the 1970s. The first LG shoe is great, but there’s just more going on with the second one. The first pair was mostly white with grey stripes and Gallagher’s face in blue on the tongue. In 2023, there was a white and green pair released, which Aspden told me broke records on Adidas’ Confirmed app. Aspden even made a 1-of-1 pair for Liam’s 50th birthday.
Year released: 2014
I’ve tried my hardest to resist putting different versions of the same shoe on this list, but this shoe needs to be pointed out. It’s based off the Adidas California, which Oi Polloi owner Nigel Lawson had a vintage pair of. He tagged along with Aspden and crew to Germany to get the shoes remade. I don’t see enough people talking about how the Topangas are one of the best SPZL shoes ever. But they are. Just look at them. Every time I see them, I get bummed out that I don’t have a pair. The color of the suede is beautiful. I like them more than the Ardwick, which is the same shoe in a different color. Wear these to the football, and, as they’d say, they’d look absolutely boss on foot.
Year released: 2016
The Adidas Manchester might be the greatest Adidas City Series shoe of all time, or at least a serious contender in the discussion. And it wasn’t even one of the original ones. The shoe was created in 2002 by Aspden when he had a different role at Adidas to help the city celebrate the Commonwealth Games. The shoe is blue and red, the colors of Manchester’s two football clubs. The Manchester was a grail for many collectors. It was re-released in 2016 for SPZL and lauded as one of the best SPZL releases. Aspden also did the shoe in all blue in conjunction with Manchester shop Oi Polloi that year. In 2020, there was a reverse version of the Manchester released that was inspired by SPZL’s collaboration with New Order. Every time I’ve worn them, people are shocked and jealous that I have them. Need a new pair.
Year released: 2014
This is the grandaddy of them all, the biggest SPZL shoe on some fronts, and certainly the first one that blew up. The Ardwick is a green version of the Topanga, which was made because Oi Polloi owner Nigel Lawson loaned his vintage Adidas California to help remake the shoe. It was only right he got his own version of it, too. Released only at Oi Polloi, people lined up for the launch. It instantly became the most sought-after SPZL shoe. People would even go after similar green Adidas just because they looked like Ardwicks. It was impossible to track down a pair. I saw people do ridiculous trades to procure them on Facebook groups. The owner of football hooligan brand Weekend Offender found a pair and didn’t know what they were, and people were trying to scam him out of his treasure. Luckily for fans and collectors, SPZL did a wide re-release of the Ardwick for the 10th anniversary this year and many people were able to get them.
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